Guest Speaker from Jerusalem
Director Dr. Susanna Kokkonen
Wednesday, Feb. 23 @ 7:00 p.m.
Host location: The Dwelling Place:
www.dwellingplace.us
2550 Redstone Road SW Huntsville, AL 35803
Dr. Susanna Kokkonen, originally from Finland, is the Director of the Christian
Friends of Yad Vashem. In her position, she travels extensively around the world to
speak about Israel, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the Middle East. She was the
featured guest speaker at the official Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 organized by
the First Minister of Northern Ireland. Fluent in six languages, she writes regularly
on Jewish and Israeli issues. Dr. Kokkonen has developed a program of enrolling
Christians from around the world as Friends of Yad Vashem. The program brings
clergy and educators to Holocaust education seminars so as to enable them to
educate their own communities.
Until April 2008 she was the Political Director of various pro-Israel lobbies at the
European Parliament in Brussels. She has also served as a Cultural Attaché at the
Embassy of Finland in Israel. In 2004, she received her Ph.D. from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem in Holocaust studies. Her dissertation topic was “Jewish
Refugees in Post-War Italy, 1945-1951.”
http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/friends/world_widChristian_Friends.html
